I remember a few years back after moving to Montreal and realising that it snowed a shitload here in the winter I had this dream.  The dream started with me gearing up in my apartment, and just heading out onto the streets of Montreal right after one of the huge dumps and throwing my skis on my feet.   I spent the rest of the day skitching behind cars and buses travelling around the city and skiing through the streets. 

Ever since that day, I've wanted to give it a try.    I had a first go at it after a debaucherous staff party at the first place I worked when I moved here, a small bike/outdoors shop way up north on St. Laurent.  We went skiing for the evening at Sauveur, and then went out for dinner with all of the employees.   Afterwards the bus dropped us off at the shop, and I decided to ski home.   Here's the route I followed:

Now, most of this ski adventure was me pushing myself along icy sidewalks and getting wierd looks from people (though skiing through downtown at 4am will do that) but it was nonetheless fun.   I stopped in the mount royal park to slide a tiny d-f-d ledge along the way, just to tell the cool story of my ski. 

However, this wasn't paydirt... I had no speed and was basically doing a glorified pushing mission through the city.    I wanted a full powder day!   

My dreams were answered the morning of the GWAR concert that we had gone to.   Overnight it dumped something like 40cm in the city, and I woke up and decided that it was time to sieze the day. 

I knew that upper Westmount had a steep pitch to it, and if I was going to find some sweet pow turns in the city, that would be my best bet.   So I donned my gear, jumped into the Subaru (thank you AWD and blizzacks) and headed North.   

The roads were a nightmare... there was snow everywhere and it was really hard to drive around.   However, after a bit of scouting I found a small residential street that would fit my needs. 

The street that I was skiing down with first tracks

First I tried my brand new Moment skis, but sadly due to a wrong temperature wax job, I couldn't get the speed I needed.   These were my first tracks, but I was just going at a snail's pace and it really wasn't that exciting. 

Determined to get more and prove that in fact I could do powder turns in the middle of a city, I hiked back up to my car opened the tickle trunk (also known as my Skybox 21 roof box) and pulled out a fresh pair of Line Chronic Wides.   New wax on them, I felt that they'd be up to the task. 

Successfully, these skis killed it.   I was able to get myself goign fast enough to jump in and out of people's yards and do powder slashes all the way down.   

Look at that slash around the phone pole... this lady was really nice and couldn't stop laughing that I wanted to slash her yard.

Big slash right at the bottom... this time on the left side of the street.

For a second here i thought I was at Baker...

All in all I ended up taking about 5 runs down this street.  I managed to jump off of little snowbanks, small ledges in people's yards, and do some driveway gaps.   My dream was complete, I had finally locked down my urban pow day!    However, I was sad that I wouldn't have any shots of me shredding it, and I'd have to rely on just telling the story.  

Walking back up for my final lap, I had two kind people question just what I was doing as they slaved away to shovel their driveway, and I asked them if they would mind taking a shot of me skiing in their front yard.    The guy got really excited and agreed... so I manged to lock down this badboy:

In my mind, this is about as good as it gets.  Thanks random dude!

Thus ends my tale in search of the street pow mission.   I was really happy to finally get my dream off the ground, and believe me I'll be in search again the next time there's a big dump.   Maybe this was lame, but hey it sure was fun.